So the last 2 weeks have been long….
I got back from Chicago, IL last night. I was there, well there and Minnesota, for 10 days. 10 days doesn’t seem like a long time, but it seems very very long when you are living it.
I was in Chicago for an Advanced Hacking and Network Penetration class. It was fantastic. 5 days of intensive study of buffer overflows, program deconstruction, SQL injection, pushing and popping and otherwise owning EIP.
It was a nice refresher course on Assembly since it has been about 8 years since I have sat down and really cracked a good assembler program. Our instructor was Jack Koziol. You will know him as the author of the The Shellcoder’s Handbook : Discovering and Exploiting Security Holes. He is also the author of Intrusion Detection with Snort .
He was a great instructor, you could tell he knew his stuff, and he was very good about presenting it in an understandable way. He may also be reading this, which is why I am obviously kissing up. 
I’m just playing, he was really a great instructor. It was given through Infosec Institute, in case you are interested in attending.
I am always surprised by the people in these types of classes. The classes are not cheap. 4 – 5000 dollars depending on your options. Yet in every one, there is at least one guy who is there, it seems, to let the instructor know that he knows it all. Sometimes blatently, but other times, like our class, it is a little more subtle. We had a guy in our class that sat in front of me, who apperently teaches an ethical hacking class, SHOCKING. Yet he knew nothing. Well, I shouldn’t say nothing, he knew a lot about some of the tools that one would use to hack, but nothing about hacking as a concept. I will explain that statement sometime in the security section. Anyway, he was very annoying. Maybe it was just me, and I was very impressed with how Jack composed himself, since I would not have been able to deal with him without letting on how irritating I found him. He rarely paid attention during the lectures, was always at least a lab or two behind and when he would ask quesitons — especially when something wasn’t working — it didn’t come out like “I am not sure what I did wrong here, can you help me” it came out like “Your lab is stupid, and your a bad instructor, and obviously the directions you gave me were wrong since this is not working”. The last day with this guy was the worst though….
The night previous he left a 280 Gig HDD in the lab, his own personal one, and went to his hotel room for the night. Of course the next morning it was gone. I can understand him freaking out, I would have too if my HDD would have been stolen. Of course, I would not have brought the dang thing to the class in the first place, nor would I have left it there overnight. Those two things aside, don’t take up 45 minutes of the last day bitching and moaning about it so that the rest of us have to deal with it. I know that sound shallow and harsh, but come on, technically you are not even supposed to have your own equipment in the lab anyway. He was stealing all the files off the InfoSec laptop. I think he was trying to get a copy of SoftICE and IDA Pro, since they are MAJOR expensive. Loser.
BTW – I did really like the rest of the people in the class, so it is not that I am a jerk …. ok I am jerk, but this guy really was annoying.
Anyhow, after the 5 days of brain mush, I had a cab take me to the airport so that I could get my rental car and make the long drive from Chicago to Blue Earth, MN. This part of the blog will hereby be known as “Why I hate dollar rent a car”.
[Why I hate Dollar Rent a car]
Several weeks before the trip, I reserved a car at the dollar web site. A nice compact car with no options – very cheap – 127.00 for the 4 days that I needed the car. Got my confirm number and was all set.
Friday, I get dropped off at the Dollar rental place. Bear in mind, my only plan is to get a car and drive to Blue earth. I have no hotel room in Chicago, my flight back to LA was not until Tuesday and I brought just enough money to get the car and pay for gas and food for the 4 days. No fall back plan, no extra cash. So I get to the rental place. It is basically an outdoor trailer, there is a guy name Dave, i think, 6′ 4″ – 450 lbs. at least, in his late 40’s. Frumpy as could be. He had obviously given up on life and had come to the conclusion that this trailer was to be his home 8 hours a day for the next 20 years. Sad. Anyway, he was brand new and Laquisha and Latonna (names made up) were too busy discussing hair curlers and extra long nails to actually come over and help him. Finally one of them did. They go to run the credit card, and she says — “you gots a different card”. No I don’t gots a different card. (Side note : when did “gots” become a word) . Apperently they were trying to charge 500.00 to the card. 500 dollars!!!! for a 127.00 rental. Hello… So I ask her why they are charging that much. “It’s our policy”. Huh? to rip me off. That’s your policy. great policy. So I try to explain to her that I do not have that much available on the card since no one bothered to tell me about this policy previously. So my conversation when something like this :
me: “Could I call my house and have my wife give you a different card”.
her : “No sir, it must a card in your hand”
me : “Can I go to an ATM and get 500.00 cash and give you the cash to hold until Tuesday”.
her: “No. Sir, do have another card” — very snotty.
me: (Thinking) Were you paying attention!?!?!? I already told you I don’t… (Speaking) No, I do not have any other credit card, I can’t give you cash?”
her: “It has to be a credit card”
me : “I don’t think you understand the position I am in, I have no other place to go, I need this car, and I need to be able to pay for with this card. If I can’t get the car, then I will likely end of sleeping in the airport until Tuesday”
her : “That is not Dollar rent a car’s problem, and quite frankely I don’t care. If you don’t have another card, we’re done here. Have a nice day”.
Suffice to say, I wasnt happy.
[/Why I hate Dollar Rent a Car]
I also wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I wandered to the other car rental places and without a reservation the cheapest I could get was about 85 dollars a day — not gonna happen. Thankfully, my wonderful boss came to the rescue and put a car on the company account at hertz. At last I was on my way, but thanks to the wench at Dollar, instead of leaving at 3 with no traffic, I was now leaving at 5:30, smack in the middle of rush hour traffic. It took 2 hours just to get out of Chicago….
Minnesota was great. I hooked back up with some old friends, got too see Eli. Kevin’s new little boy. Saw a few other old friends.. It was nice to get away like that and relax finally. I even made it through the whole trip without even getting a speeding ticket. That was a first.
Anyway — I am home, and happy to be here.
